['E'Rl 



.C974 





LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




0DD0174ba'^3 



('o ^ 'i'^ .*^fe' '^ ^"^ -''^i^- \s^<^ -MM'- \ 

,<^^,\^ ^/,^^.%^ /^*i^fe-\. ^' .^:S 

























V .♦^"^. 



ft? ^Ca 









'^.'^^t^-^-^^^ ^^o^^^'".^ \J^^'-''\<^ ^o/' 












A^*^ 

•J.^ "^^f 



'•\^'*' V*^'^^^ "<.•'o^^\G*' V*^^^V 



a5°,t. 









c^ ^--..^^^ /j^'v %.^" ' ym^, x/ 



:t»^ a 



^^'% 






>" ,.v'r 






.4 






V^'/ %-^'/ v^-\/ V 

fei\ *^..** .-if^L-. %../ :^l^: **..** .'^Slte'. 


















AN 



ORATION 



PRONOUNCED AT 



BOSTON 



BEFORE THE 



COLONIZATION SOCIETY 



MASSACHUSETTS, 



ANNIVERSARY' OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, 



4Jl|riLlI ^9 a©QQa 



By Hon. CALEB GUSHING. 



BOSTON: 

L Y C E U ftl P R E S S — G. W. LIGHT & Co 
1833. 



AN 



ORATION 



FHOISODNCED AT 



O S T O N 



BEFORE THE 



COLONIZATION SOCIETY 



MASSACHUSETTS, 



ANNIVERSARY OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, 



JUL V 4, 18 33. 



BY CALEB CUSHING. 

n 



BOSTON: 

LYCEUM PRESS — G. W. LIGHT & Co, 

1833. 






At a Moetiiig of Ihe Board of Managers of the i^assacjusctts ©olonf^atfou 
SoctCtl), July 4, 1833, His Honor Lieut. Gov. Armstrong in the Chair, it was 

Resolved, That the thanks of the Board be presented to Mr. Gushing for his 

able and appropriate Address this day, and that a copy thereof be requested for the 

press. 

J. V. C. SMITH, 

Sec. Mass. Society. 



^W-\^(^..ai Uft^Vw>,. 



ORATION. 



Liberty,— liberty of thought, liberty of speech, liberty of 
action, — liberty in government, liberty in person, — is the master- 
principle, the predominant idea, the great first motive passion, 
which, in all times, but most of all in our own, has impelled and 
agitated the world. Whether in savage or civilized existence, it is 
alike the cherished desire of the human heart, the potent spring 
of human life. 

Chasing his prey in the pathless depths of his western 
wilderness, over savannahs or through forests coeval with 
creation, — although science, and art, and religion, and whatever 
else refines and blesses humanity, be unknown to him, — yet man 
feels that he is free, — free as the luxuriant vegetation, which 
springs up spontaneously around him fi'om a virgin earth unbroken 
by the plough, — free as the untamed courser, who divides with 
him the empire of the desert. It is the one oversvvaying senti- 
ment, which God implanted in his breast : it inspires him with 
untutored eloquence in council, it nerves his arm in battle. — 
Tear him from his native solitudes, and place him in the midst of 
all that civilization can gather together of splendid, alluring, or 
wonderful, and he pines to exchange the luxuries of Art for the 
congenial freedom of Nature. 

Nor is the inextinguishable love of liberty less characteristic of 
man as a cultivated and intellectual being, as a constituent part of 



the complex fabric of political society, to which we belong. To 
retain it when possessed, to recover it when lost, has been the 
object of those mighty efforts of the human race, which have res- 
cued from obHvion, one after the other, successive ages in history, 
and held up the actors in them to the admiration of posterity. — 
They are epochs familiar to the memory, they are men whose 
image is ever present to the mind ; and whether ihey honored the 
mountains of Greece or Switzerland, the plains of Poland or 
Lombardy, why should I pause to recount them, when here, amid 
the scenes of our fathers' sacrifices and our fathers' glory, and on 
this day, the anniversary of our national independence, we our- 
selves are assembled in the name and in the holy cause of Liberty ? 

It is, I repeat, in her name and in her cause, that we have as- 
sembled, and fitly, therefore, upon this proud anniversary, since 
the day of our emancipation from bondage as a people should be 
consecrated to the one high principle, which singles it out from its un- 
distinguished fellovi's in the lapse of time, — the conservation of the 
genuine theory of universal justice, — the spreading abroad of the 
great truth that all men are born to equal participation in the bles- 
sings of life, — the rights and the wrongs of the slave, wherever he 
may be and of whatev^er clime or complexion, — the cause, in a 
word, of constitutional Liberty. 

We, indeed, in the land of the pilgrim fathers, the chosen ref- 
uge of the oppressed, inhale the pure atmosphere of freedom ; we 
imbue its doctrines with the very being we draw from the maternal 
breast ; they come to be the first elements of our moral constitu- 
tion in manhood ; and for us, it is only the abuses of liberty from 
within, that we have room to apprehend in our New England. — 
And would to Heaven that it were so in our whole country ; that 
the curse of involuntary servitude did not still cling to so large a 
portion of our countrymen, destroying their peace, filling their 
dwellings with the agonies of perpetual domestic suspicion, sub- 
jecting their families to massacre, and hanging its dead weight upon 
their public welfare ; that the chains of the Negro were at length 
and forever struck from his limbs ; that Liberty, Knowledge, and 
Christianity, were made equally the unpurchased birthright of the 
Europ^n and the African, throughout the New World ! 



Glorious, in truth, and auspicious will he the day, — glorious 'for 
our country, auspicious for the human race, — when man shall 
cease to he the bond slave of man. It matters not what name of 
sect we of New England may hear, — in what form of association, 
what combination of party, we may be ranked, — on this point we 
are of universal accord ; and we are so, — not merely from that in- 
timate conviction, that prejudice of education, if you will, which 
has grow^n with our growth, — but on considerations of eternal truth, 
of justice, of humanity, of religion, of expediency, — of everything 
which should inform the heart and control the actions of a rational 
and accountable man, — of a patriot, a philosopher, and a Christian. 

We maintain, and the letter of our Constitution is to us a truth, 
that men are horn to equal political rights, however the accidents 
of fortune may interpose to prevent the enjoyment of those rights ; 
and that personal servitude, therefore, is contrary to the funda- 
mental principles of political justice. 

We believe that, although the Bible inculcates legal obedience 
of the subject to the ruler, and of the servant to the master, yet 
political equality, civil freedom and personal freedom, and of 
course the doctrines of emancipation, are among the pecuhar and 
characteristic lessons of the religion of Jesus Christ. 

We know that, however the interest of the master may consult 
the physical well-being of the slaves in whom his wealth con- 
sists, yet that for them the moral benefits of life are imperfectly, 
when at all, enjoyed. They are not educated, lest through 
education they should learn to appreciate the value of that liberty 
which they have not, and should acquire the temper, the will, and 
the means to escape from their involuntary thraldom. That ex- 
quisite sentiment, which ennobles and sanctifies the relation of 
the sexes, is not theirs ; for how shall the ties of domestic life, 
when subject to the caprice, and dependant on the interests and im- 
providence of a master, possess the highest and holiest of sanctions? 
The pursuit of riches, rank, or distinction, — the desire of public use- 
fulness,— the sense of conscious capability to augment the sum of 
human knowledge, virtue, and happiness, and the will to exert that 
capability for noble ends,— the divine unction of religious ardor and 
apostolic zeal, — the noble passion of disinterested well-doing for the 



good of our fellows, — ambition of power or fame, — in short, all the 
strong moral inducements of human action, be they for time or be 
they for eternity, belong to man as the agent of his own volition : 
they are the magnificent heritage of the free. We are the creatures 
of motive, and it is the influence of circumstance upon the springs 
of action within us, which gives to the soul its energy, and to 
existence all its beauty and Avorth. I know it is the ordinary 
common-place of rhetoric and poetry to dwell on this fact ; but it 
is not the less a truth for its triteness ; and while it has been true 
of slavery under all its modifications, it is more especially true of 
slavery as it is liere, where the color of the slave creates a visible 
and permanent distinction between him and his master, and pre- 
vents the enslaved race from being gradually absorbed in, and 
assimilated with, the mass of the free population. 

We are deeply sensible of the pernicious influence of slavery up- 
on the condition of that portion of our country where it exists, and 
the character of its free inhabitants. We see that it tends to weaken 
the spirit of enterprise, and to banish industry by rendering la- 
bor disreputable ; that it corrupts the morals by promoting idle- 
ness and affording facilities for vicious indulgence ; and that, strik- 
ing as these evils are, they are poorly compensated by the livelier 
sense of the value of freedom and higher tone of honor, which 
may prevail in a slave-holding community. We see, among the 
States of the Union, some, which nature has most bounteously favor- 
ed, comparatively impoverished by the system of slave labor, — ren- 
dered tributary to the industrious population of the free States, or 
of foreign countries, for all the comforts and conveniences of Ufe, — 
unblessed by the signs of universal competency, happiness, and wel- 
fare, the commodious habitations, the thrifty and well ordered 
farms, the flourishing manufactories, the ships, the churches, the 
schools, which are the result and the honor of free labor in the 
Eastern and Middle States ; — we see all this, the retribution which 
slavery works out upon itself, we see that monstrous disloyalty to- 
wards the Union, in certain regions of the South, of which, what- 
ever may be the pretexts, this undoubtedly is not the least fruitful 
source ; and in these considerations, even if the right of the slave did 
not cry to heaven for his ransom, we should find incentives enough to 



plead, and labor, and pray for the purification of this plague-spot 
from our land, for the end of this great drawback in the palmy pros- 
perity of the Union. 

If any sentiments, differing from these, have obtained among us, it 
is unknown to me : — I avow these to be the sentiments which I en- 
tertain, I believe them to have universal currency, throughout New- 
England. Standing here, on this occasion, by the invitation of the 
Colonization Society of Massachusetts, to advocate its cause and jus- 
tify its purposes, and aware of the extraordinary violence of language 
employed in certain quarters to impugn the motives and abstract doc- 
trine of prominent members and friends of that Society, I have felt 
bound to put on record, in the outset, a distinct declaration of 
creed on this point, at the risk of seeming to argue that, which 
none disputes, and of illustrating positions too plain to admit of de- 
nial ; — and I have done this, not so much in respect of my own 
opinion, as in justice to the good name of the Society. 

For the true questions to be considered are, — What is the ob- 
ject of the Colonization Society ? Is that object laudable ? Is it 
pursued by honorable means ? The private motives or personal 
opinions of any individual who embarks in the cause, whether they 
be good, or bad, or indifferent, these are a matter concerning him 
alone, his conscience, or his reputation, — and for which the Socie- 
ty is no wise responsible. 

What, then, is the object of the Colonization Society ? Is it 
laudable ? Is it honorably pursued ? 

This object is simple, direct, visible ; there is no concealment of 
real design, there is no profession of a simulated one : — it is to es- 
tablish colonies on the western coast of Africa, by means of such 
free colored persons or emancipated slaves in the United States, as 
may voluntarily emigrate under the auspices of the. Society. 

Whether this object be a laudable one, depends upon the con- 
sideration of two facts, namely, the operation of the Society in the 
United States and its operation in Africa. 

Whhin the United States, the friends of the Colonization Soci- 
ety conscientiously believe that the association is a useful instru- 
ment of beneficence, indirectly to the whjtes, but more directly to 
the blacks themselves, whether enslaved or free. 



8 

And, first, as to the enslaved blacks. It is perfectly well under- 
stood that, in the slave-holding States, many obstacles, arising from 
the tenor of the laws respecting free negroes, stand in the way 
of emancipating slaves, and deter the master from doing this, where 
otherwise his convictions of duty would outweigh the consideration 
of his personal interest. The Colonization Society presents to 
such persons a ready method of accomplishing their benevolent 
purpose. It has actually conveyed to Afiica nearly one thousand 
manumitted slaves, and needs only augmented means to extend its 
usefulness in this respect. Here is a definite, practical good, be- 
yond the reach, it would seem, of controversy or cavil, and suffi- 
cient, of itself alone, to entitle the Society to unquahfied commen- 
dation. The Society is also of manifest utility in respect of enslav- 
ed blacks, because, in addition to its direct agency in conveying 
them to Africa when emancipated, it tends to promote and encour- 
age the spirit of emancipation, and, by the information it diffuses, 
the discussion it elicits, the cultivated and influential individuals 
in the South, who engage in its cause, gradually to bring to a right 
conclusion the minds of the slave-holders themselves, through whom 
alone the abolition of the system of slavery can be peacefully ac- 
complished. Here, also, is definite, practical good. I am aware 
that much has been urged as to the incapacity of the Society to 
transport to Africa all the slave population of the United States, 
and comparisons are instituted between the periodical increase of 
the slaves in a given time, and the number of slaves thus far colo- 
nized under the auspices of the Society. Whether this conclusion 
be sustained by the premises alleged in its support, I do not now 
stop to inquire ; it does not, in any event, constitute a sound objec- 
tion to the Colonization Society, inasmuch as, be the good, which 
it is capable of accomplishing in this respect, great, or be it small, 
here is, I repeat, at any rate a good, a definite practical good, actu- 
ally accomplished by the Society, and a wide field of future useful- 
ness opened to it in the slave-holding States. 

Secondly, as to the free blacks. It is impossible to deny that 
the free blacks in the United States labor under disadvantages aris- 
ing from color, which no system of laws, however just and equal, 
— no plans of benevolence, however comprehensive, — can remove. 



God forbid that 1 should speak of this as matter of reproach : I re- 
fer to it only as an existing fact, which it would be idle and absurd 
to keep out of sight, in discussing the means of serving the color- 
ed population of the United States. Nor does it need that I should 
enter into the details or extent of the fact ; since it is enough to be 
aware of its existence. I do not mean to say that the possession 
of high intellectual and moral qualities by a colored person would 
not be duly honored among us ; on the contrary, I believe it would 
be ; and, from a sentiment of compassion toward the race, more hon- 
ored even than the same degree of merit in the dominant class. 
Still the fact remains that, whether in polhical or in social relations, 
full equality does not now exist between the races, and is not to be 
anticipated in any probable future contingency. Proceeding upon 
this incontestable fact, the Colonization Society says to the free 
colored inhabitants of the United States : ' We offer to you a se- 
cure asylum in a land congenial to your physical constitution, where 
you will be the dominant race, — where the avenues to wealth, dis- 
tinction, and usefulness will be yours indisputably ; the land of 
your fathers ; that Africa from which you or your progenitors were 
forcibly severed, and whither you may return to be the missiona- 
ries of civilization and of rehgion ; we. freely offer to you a parti- 
cipation in the advantages now enjoyed in Liberia by those of your 
color who have already emigrated ; — if you accept them, it is well ; 
if you prefer to remain here, the inferior class, it is well ; — it is not 
our benefit that we have primarily in view, but that of you and your 
race ; and in proposing to you what we conceive to be a valuable 
object, we have discharged some portion of that great debt to Af- 
rica, which we acknowledge to be due from Europeans and from 
their descendants in America.' Such is the language, which the 
Colonization Society addresses to the free colored inhabitants of 
the country ; and I profess that I cannot see in it either cause of 
reproach on the part of colored persons, or ground of excited feel- 
ings, or least of all justification for the hostility of caste, which has 
been industriously propagated in certain quarters in consequence of 
the establishment and signal success of the Colonization Society. 
Lastly, as to the whites. While the Colonization Society has 
not, either in the causes which originally induced its formation, or 
2 



10 

in the management of Its affairs, proposed any advantage to the 
whites as to tlie main object of its exertions, yet the friends of the 
Society perceive that it promotes harmonious action upon the sub- 
ject of slavery in the different sections of the Union ; and they look 
to it as the instrument of uUimate good to themselves, in so far as 
it may tend, by peaceable means, to produce the final abolition of 
the slave-system in the Southern States. 

Within the United States, therefore, I hold it to be demonstra- 
ble, that the operation of the Colonization Society is beneficial 
to every class of its inhabitants ; how much so, is not now the 
question, but at all events beneficial ; — and I think it can be 
shown also to be beneficial in Africa. 

There was a time when the utility of the Society, as respected 
Africa, was contingent, w^as matter of speculation ; but it is so no 
longer. A flourishing colony of emigrant colored persons from 
the United States, having borne with them the means of educa- 
tion,— the civilization and the reUgion of the land they left, — 
now exists in Liberia, to utter its testimony in behalf of the 
Society, and to constitute the fulcrum, whereby, under the blessing 
of God, the natives of Africa may be raised to the condition of 
civilized men and of Christians. When I reflect upon the rapid 
growth of the Colony of Liberia, and call to mind the painful 
progress of the first colonies of Virginia and Massachusetts, out of 
which this great Republic has been permitted to spring, I feel 
that the prospect, which is thus opened to Africa, is brilliant 
enough to justify the most ardent enthusiasm in the cause of the 
Colonization Society. And familiar as this part of my subject 
may be to many of my hearers, I am unwilling to dismiss it 
without some brief remarks on the practicability and effects of 
civilizing the Africans. 

In all ages, the Continent of Africa has constituted a great geo- 
graphical problem, the debateable ground of science, the fruitful 
field of doubt, prejudice, and misapprehension. Once, opinion 
was, that its tropical regions were given up to the dominion of 
burning heat, intolerant of human hfe, impervious to the footsteps 
of conquest or commerce. The voyages of the early Portuguese 
navigators effectually dispelled this false idea, and displayed to us 



11 

a coast, obnoxious, of course, to the heats wliich prevail in other 
tropical regions of the globe, but thronged, at the same time, with 
a robust and vigorous native population, and as later experience 
has proved, no more deleterious to Europeans than similar lati- 
tudes of Asia and America. But the vast interior of the Con- 
tinent still continued to be the region of mystery, pictured to the 
imagination as a wide, sandy desert, and known to us only by a 
few scattered particulars derived from the ancients, by the mea- 
gre and unsatisfactory accounts of Arabian geographers, by here 
and there a solitary fact gleaned from the Barbary traders and 
the slave-merchants of Nubia or Guinea. But what difficulties 
could withstand, what dangers could deter, the ardor of European 
thirst of knowledge, European cupidity of gain, European benev- 
olence ? One after another of the adventurous pioneers of improve- 
ment fell a victim to his zeal in the cause of knowledge and hu- 
manity ; Park, Ledyard, Burckhardt, Clapperton, had imparted 
a melancholy fame to the history of African discovery ; until at 
last, when the best organized attempts of public bodies had 
utterly failed of success, it was reserved for obscure individuals, a 
French mariner and an English domestic servant, to reveal the 
hidden secrets, the great navigable rivers, the rich soil, the exu- 
berant vegetation, the numerous population, of the heart of Africa. 
And the discoveries of CaiUie and Lander seem to have providen- 
tially chanced at that period of time, when the estabhshment of 
the American Colony of Liberia, the conquest of Algiers by France, 
the regeneration of Egypt under the auspices of Mohammed- All 
and the assured possession of Southern Africa by the English, 
conspire together at length to promise the redemption of this 
great Continent from the degradation of ages. 

There yet remains one last, lingering prejudice regarding 
Africa, to be dispelled by the clear light of truth, to be rebuked 
by the irresistible voice of experience. Asia has run her long 
career of glory ; Europe has plucked from her hand the torch of 
science, the sceptre of empire ; three centuries have sufficed to 
render America the competitor of the Old World in the march of 
improvement ; and wherefore shall not Africa thrust in her sickle to 
the harvest, wherefore not Africa stand up 'redeemed, regenerated, 
disenthralled,' under the vivifying influences of Christianity? 



12 

It is the common idea, I believe, that Europeans, by engaging 
in the slave-trade, are, in chief part, accountable for the barba- 
rism of Africa ; but detestable as that traffic has been and is, and 
heavy as the load of guilt is, which rests upon those who have 
pursued it, the slave trade is the effect, rather than the cause, of 
the moral abasement of Africa. There is a conqiiering race in 
the interior of the Continent, the Arabs, who, like other Mahom- 
etans, pursue the slave-trade as well in Africa as in Asia, and 
who, on both continents, serve to aggravate, rather than counter- 
act, the debasing influences of paganism. Civilization, of Arabs 
and Africans alike, is the powerful engine by which the slave- 
trade is to be eradicated from the earth ; and it is from the agency 
of Christians, or of them primarily, that any rational hope of the 
civilization of Africa can l)e derived. And who so proper to com- 
municate the boon of Christianity, and of civilization along with 
it, to Western Africa, as men of African birth or extraction them- 
selves, prepared for the noble undertaking by residence among the 
people of Christendom ? 

To deny that the civilization of Africa is practicable, is to forget 
all that history tells us of the greatness and glory of ancient Egypt, 
whither Herodotus, Pythagoras, and Plato, the fathers of Grecian 
learning and philosophy, repaired for intellectual improvement, as 
the Romans afterwards did to Athens ; it is to forget the con- 
quests of Sesostris ; it is to forget the stupendous works of Art 
still remaining, and capable forever to remain, upon the banks 
of the Nile, indestructible monuments of the wealth and refine- 
ment of the Ethiopians and Egyptians, themselves, in the 
marked physical peculiarities which meet the eye at the present 
day, of the indigenous races of Africa. 

One other question remains to be disposed of, and that is, 
whether the o!)ject of the Colonization Society, thus laudable in 
itself, has been pursued by honorable means ? 

And liere let me premise that I conceive it to be matter of un- 
speakable regret, that the friends of another association, professing 
purposes of philanthropy akin to ours, — I mean the Anti-Slavery 
Society, — should have deemed it needful or proper to commence 
a deliberate and persevering warfare on the aims of the Colonization 



13 

Society. I feel that such hostility was not called for ; 1 think 
it is unwarranted ; and I perceive that it has already had most 
injurious effects, — not on the Colonization Society, for that has 
gained friends by discussion, — but on the feelings of colored per- 
sons in the free States, and their condition in the slave-holding 
States. Indeed, when I remember that the jealousies of the free 
blacks has been causelessly aroused by vehemently denouncing 
men among the best and purest in this Republic as conspirators 
against their rights, as embarked in a project of deliberate fraud 
on the nation, a diabolical scheme, a nefarious plan of deception, — 
for such is the language applied to this association, — I cannot bul de- 
plore the misapprehension of facts, delusion, or wickedness, which 
thus assails the objects and supporlersof a public charity so gen- 
erous in design as the Colonization Society. In regard of all such 
general imputations on the motives of the Society, it would neither 
become the dignity of this occasion, nor the calmness proper to 
the place, to remark at length ; but there are points of difference 
between the two associations, which may well be considered here, 
as being reasonable subjects of discussion between men alike pro- 
fessing the pursuit of a praiseworthy end. For it is time the fact 
should be clearly understood, in the free States, and loudly pro- 
claimed, that Anti- Slavery is not Anti- Colonization ; the sup- 
posed necessary identity between opposition to slavery and oppo- 
sition to African colonization is a radical error, whic-h chiefly, as 
I have reason to believe, has misled conscientious individuals to 
withhold their countenance from the Colonization Society. Let me 
inquire then, for a moment, what we can do, and what we ought 
to do, in respect of the great question of slavery, as existing in 
the United States. 

All, who have read the Constitution of the United States, know 
full well, that by the very fundamental conditions of the Union, 
Massachusetts and Virginia stand, relatively to the question of the 
slave-system, in the position of foreign States. We have pre- 
cisely the same means of direct influence over that system in 
Virginia or South Carolina, as in Cuba, in Jamaica, in Brazil. 
It is not therefore, by legislation, that we in Massachusetts can 
effect the emancipation of the slaves in the Southern States, any 



14 

more than by po-jitive legh^lation, wc can relieve Ireland from sub- 
jection to Eiiglnntl, or restore the independence of the Poles. Our 
means of direct influence in this matter are confined to persua- 
sion, argument, exhortation, whether written or spoken, addressed 
either to the colored or the white inhabitants, the governors or the 
governed, of the slave-holding States. 

By inflammatory publications clandestinely circulated among 
the slaves of Virginia or Carolina, we have the faculty of in- 
citing them to insurrection : — in doing which, we commit an in- 
dictable crime, we wilfully violate our oaths of allegiance to the 
Constitution, we outrage the commands of God. If, acting thus 
in defiance of all divine and human laws, we succeed in produ- 
cing an insurrection of the colored inhabitants, — a servile war,— 
we shall, to be sure, bring the question of abolition to a sharp and 
speedy crisis, — a crisis of massacre, of blood, of conflagration, end- 
ing, if thoroughly prosecuted, in nothing less than the extermina- 
tion either of the slaves or of their masters. Whoever can coolly con- 
template such an event, whoever can deliberately set about the 
production of it, is a portent in the shape of man : — whoever can 
look to it as a great purpose of benevolence and philanthropy, 
must have utterly lost the capacity of distinguishing between right 
and wrong, reason and error, truth and falsehood. Reasoning, as 
such a inan must reason, to arrive at such a conclusion, the per- 
petrators of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's justified the as- 
sassination of their huguenot brethren, — sacrificing, that is, all 
consideration of the quality of means in the pursuit of a proposed 
end, and yielding up the judgment, hoodwinked and fettered, to 
the dominion of a metaphysical subtlety. And in earnest reality, 
whilst the attempt to produce the abolition of slavery through the 
means of insurrection is manifest crime, the scheme itself would 
be madness and folly. Let a servile war be kindled, by what- 
ever agency, in either of the slave-holding States, and at that 
instant the inhabitants of that State would be constitutionally 
entitled to the whole physical force of the Union, if need were, to 
effect its suppression ; they would be constitutionally entitled to it, 
and they would have it ; they would obtain it from the public 
authorities of the Union for the time being, if they were alive to 



15 

their honor and tbeii- duty, if they possessed a tithe of thefirranesg 
and patriotism exhibited by the present government in suppressing 
disloyalty among free inhabitants of the South ; and if they did 
not obtain it from the pubhc authorities of the Union, they would 
obtain it from the spontaneous sympathy of their fellow citizens 
in neighboring States. Of course, such an insurrection must 
fail, and would ultimately tend, as unsuccessful servile wars have 
generally tended, whether in ancient or modern times, to add ten- 
fold weight to the chains of the slave, while its immediate effect 
would be to induce a scene of desolation, of unavaiUng bloodshed, 
from which the imagination recoils with horror. I trust in heaven, 
for the honor of our country and our species, that no individual, of 
sane understanding-, who deliberately desires and would pro- 
mote a servile war in the Southern States, is to be found in 
Massachusetts. 

But I will presume, — I feel bound in courtesy to presume, — that 
all, among us, view in a proper hght the possibility of an insur- 
rection in the South, and that, therefore, wdien men write or 
speak of the immediate abolition of the slave system, they intend 
to act upon the minds of the masters, not of the slaves. Taking 
this for granted, we are bound then, as rational men, in whatever 
schemes of benevolence we may agitate, to act with reference to 
existing facts, and to consider, not only what is just in itself, but 
what is practicable in operation and beneficial in its consequences. 
We, in the North, all desire the abolition of the slave-system ; we 
are anxious to cooperate in effecting this, by our money, our advice, 
our personal aid. But what shall we do ? What is the specific, 
definite act to be performed ? English writers, who mean well, 
perhaps, but who are deplorably ignorant of the nature of our 
government, and of the feelings of our people, say to us, — Abol- 
ish slavery at once, by legislation.* This counsel may or may 

*The degree of ignorance on this point, which prevails in England, maj- be judged 
from the tenor of a recent article on this country iji the Edinburgh Review, the conduc- 
tors of which cannot be accused of unfriendly spirit towards lis, and whom certainly it 
is proper to rank among the most inlelligent men in Great Britain. ' We do, therefore, 
hope,' the reviewer says, ' that the Congress will, while it is yet time, open their eyes 
to the danger with which the bondage of the blacks threatens the Union; and that they 
(that is Congress) will provide for their instruction and gradual emancipation.' — 
No. cxii, p. 478. 



16 

Tiot be good ; luit it presents, to us in New England, no visible 
aim, no tangible object, nothing which we have the physical 
power to execute. It would be just as reasonable to ask of Great 
Britain to abolish, b)^ act of Parliament, the despotic authority of 
the Czar in Russia, or the Mahometan religion in Turkey, or the 
deadly scourge of the cholera-morbus, or any other of the great 
mornlor physical evils, which afflict the posterity of Adam. What 
then, shall we do? — It returns to this: — We may influence the 
actions of our southern fellow-citizens through their reason, their 
fears, their conscience ; and thus only can we promote the aboli- 
tion of slavery in Yirginia or Carolina. 

Here, then, is a great social duty to be discharged towards our 
fellow-men, namely, to convince the slave-holder that rehgion, 
justice, expediency, conspire to demand the abolition of personal 
servitude. Noble duty ! High and holy task ! Whose pen 
shall be idle, whose tongue shall be silent, when this glorious field 
of humanity invites the etforts of the philanthropist and the 
Christian 1 But it is conviction, that we are to produce, in the 
minds of rational men, who alone have the power to act; and let 
us proceed to the task as rational men ourselves, by such meth- 
ods as may afford some prospect of success, not by such as will 
be sure to occasion total failure. Our southern fellow-citizens, we 
may suppose, either deny the practicabiHty of abolition, or they 
deny that it is for their interest, or they deny that conscience and 
pubhc duty require them to sacrifice their interest for the benefit 
of their slave population :— what are the arguments, by which we 
may hope to change their positive opinion upon these points ? 

To solve this problem, to find the answer to this question, we 
must examine the rights of the South, and the feelings of the 
South. 

First, as to the rights of the South. By the Constitution, theirs 
alone is the power to act in this matter : — of it, we have no legal 
jurisdiction. To legislate, in Congress, upon the slaves of Virginia, 
is to dissolve the Union. I am free to say that, for myself, and 
on this point, I feel glad, in my humble sphere, to follow the lead 
of the great lights of the land. Of the condition of comprom- 
ise respecting slavery, by which alone the South and the North 



17 

are bound together in Union, I am ready to maintain with Joseph 
Story, that ' He, who wishes well to his country, will adhere 
steadily to it, as a fundamental policy, which extinguishes some of 
the most mischievous sources of all political divisions, — those 
founded on geographical position and domestic institutions.' — I 
am content to echo the declaration of Daniel Webster, w-hen 
he said, of the same provisions of the Constitution : — 'It is the 
original bargain, the compact ; let it stand, let the advantage 
of it be fully enjoyed ; the Union itself is too full of benefits to 
be'hazarded in propositions for changing its original basis : — I go 
for the Constitution as it is, and the Union as it is.* On a ques- 
tion of constitution, I repeat, whither Webster and Story lead, 
who need scruple to follow ? — True, we may say to the South : 
' Our fathers, the sages of the Revolution, made an improvident 
bargain, when those of them, who represented the Northern Col- 
onies, stipulated never to interfere by legislation in the pohtical 

* ' Viewed in its proper V^ght, as a real compromise, in a case of conflicting interests, for 
the common good, liie provision is entitled to great praise for its moderation, its aim at 
practical utility, and its tendency to satisfy the people, that the Union, framed by all, 
ought to be dear to all, by the privileges it confers, as well as the blessings it secures. — 
It had a material influence in reconcihng the Southern States to other provisions in the 
Constitution, and especially to the power of making commercial regulations by a mere 
majorit}', which was thought peculiarly to favor the Northern States. It has sometimes 
been complained of, as a grievance ; but he, who wishes well to his country, will adhere 
steadily to it, as a fundamental policy, which extinguishes some of the most mischievous 
sources of all political divisioi'.s,— those founiled on geographical position, and domes- 
tic institutions. It did not, however, pass the Convention without objection. Upon its 
first introduction, it was supported by the votes of nine States against two. In subse- 
quent stages of the discussion, it met with some opposition; and in one of the State Con- 
ventions it was strenuously resisted. The wish of every patriot ought now to be, requies- 
catinpace.' — Story's Comment.\ries, Vol. ii, p. 113. 

' There is not, and never has been, a disposition in the North to interfere with these in- 
terests of the South. Such interference has never been supposed to be witlWn the pow- 
er of government ; nor has it been, in any way, attempted. The slavery of the South 
has always been regarded as a matter of domestic policy, left with the States themselves, 
and with which the Federal Government had nothing to do. Certainly, sir, 1 am, and 
ever have been, of that opinion. * * * I regard domestic slavery as one of thegreatest of 
evils, both moral and political. But though it be a mal.idy, whether it he curable, and 
if so, by what means, — or, on the other hand, whether it be the vulnus immedicabile of 
the social system, I leave it to those whose right and duty it is to inquire and decide. — 
And this I believe, sir, is, and uniformly has been, the sentiment of the North.'— W^eb- 
ster's Speeches, p. 380. 

' We know, sir, that the representation of the States in the other House is not equal.— 
We know that great advantage, in that respect, is enjoyed by the slave-holding Slates. 
* * Nevertheless, I do not complain : nor would I countenance any movement to alter 
the arrangement of representation. It is the original bargain, the compact :•— let it stand, 
let the advantage of it be fully enjoyed. The Union itself is too full of benefils to be haz- 
arded in propositions for changing its original basis. I go for the Constitution as it is, and 
for the Union as it is.' — Ibid, p. 382. 

3 



18 

condition of the slaves held by the South ; we do not choose, or 
our consciences do not permit us, to abide by the terms of that 
compact, and we must separate unless they be changed.' We 
may say this ; and who doubts that the hour, when the North 
should thus address the South, would witness the death-struggle of 
the Constitution ? And should the Union be dissolved, and upon 
such a question, the North and the South would then be hostile 
nations ; our advice would thenceforth be repelled by the people of 
the South, as the interested counsel of public enemies ; our pro- 
fessions of philanthropy and appeals to conscience would be treat- 
ed by them with scorn as emanating from men, who had begun by 
polluting themselves all over with the violation of a solemn con- 
tract ; our newspapers, pamphlets, reviews, addresses, books, would 
be excluded from their borders as contraband goods, or rather 
as noxious things infected with pestilence and death ; — and when 
this lamentable state of things should have arrived, where, unless in 
a war of invasion, would then be our power to better the condition, 
or promote the emancipation,of the slave-inhabitants of the South? 
Secondly, as to the feelings of the South. Let it be remember- 
ed that the task, for us to perform in this matter, is persuasion, — 
the conversion of rational beings to our faith and o])inion. And 
how, in any circumstances, do we begin the work of persuasion ? 
Is it by obloquy, outrage, and insult ? Is it by addressing to the 
friend, whose judgment we would affect, such personal indignities, 
as no gentleman could tranquilly submit to for a moment ? We 
may revile our fellow-citizens in the choicest dialect of newspaper 
invective ; we may denounce upon them wrath and woe ; but they 
must be more or less than men, to receive such language as the 
fitting means of persuasion. In these remarks, I have spoken of 
men in general, even as we should find them among our own peacea- 
ble and comparatively phlegmatic citizens. But who does not know 
that the case is a thousand times stronger in reference to the peo- 
ple of the South, ardent as they proverbially are, keenly alive to 
personarreproach, impatient of insult, and on this particular sub- 
ject peculiarly sensitive, as being fully conscious of their rights, and 
indignant at the actual or supposed attempts of individuals at the 



19 

North to stir up their slaves to insurrection ? To think of induc- 
ing them to abolish the slave-system, by such language as I allude 
to, and as I not seldom see or hear used for that purpose, — by lan- 
guage of menace, dictation, reproach, and general obloquy, — is 
mere infatuation. 

Practically speaking, therefore, and leaving alone the decision 
of various abstract questions, and curious points of religious or 
moral doctrine, which have somewhat unseasonably been mixed up 
in this controversy, — setting these apart, the considerations, which 
I have thus briefly suggested, exhibit, as I understand it, the line of 
discrimination between the policy of the Colonization Society and 
that of the Anti-Slavery Society, touching the great question of abo- 
lition. We, who maintain the principles of the Colonization So- 
ciety, ardently desire the abolition of slavery, whenever, and so 
soon as, it can be peaceably accomplished ; and herein our anxiety 
falls not short of that, which actuates the members of the Anti- 
Slavery Society. But we aim at practical objects by practical 
means ; and we are at a loss to understand the definite point on 
which our assailants would lay their hands, and to which they 
would apply their money, — and still more to conceive how any 
useful purpose whatever is to be accomplished by such means as 
they employ. I say our assailants, because extraordinary as the 
fact is, it is not the less true, that the main immediate object of 
the Anti-Slavery Society would appear from its publications, al- 
though not so expressed in its constitution, to be the denouncing 
and maligning of the Colonization Society, its founders, its mem- 
bers, its purposes, both in Europe and America. 

Reluctant as I am to trespass upon the indulgence of the Socie- 
ty, I pass over lesser points of clifierence between the Colonization 
Society and the Anti-Slavery Society, to advert, in conclusion, to 
the effect of the spirit and publications of the latter in the free 
States. That their influence is extremely and entirely pernicious 
in the slave-holding States, — injurious to the slaves, injurious to 
the free blacks, injurious to the whites, — calculated to check manu- 
mission and to def r the period of the final abolition of slavery, at 
the same time that they ep.gender at the South a most unfortunate 



20 

feeling of irritation, resentment, and jealousy towards the North, 
founded upon the mistaken idea that these publications express the 
public sentiment of the North, — that such, I say, is their influence 
in the slave-holding States, appears, as well from general observa- 
tion, as from positive testimony of the most indisputable character. 
And their influence in the free States is only less prejudicial than 
at the South, for the reason that here they have less of inflamma- 
ble matter on which to act. 

The Anti-Slavery Society has labored to convince the free col- 
ored persons in the United States, that the whites in general, and 
especially the Colonization Society, are engaged in some strange 
conspiracy against their welfare, — a kind of second Popish Plot. 
Stimulated by the writings of the prominent officers of the Anti- 
Slavery Society, — writings which tliat Society has adopted as its 
own, — the colored inhabitants of the free States have occasionally 
manifested a spirit of hostility towards the whites, fatal to the har- 
mony of the two races in its immediate effect, and in its remote ef- 
fect adapted to render the condition of the free blacks doubly un- 
comfortable, and to discourage and counteract all f)hilanthropic de- 
sio-ns in their behalf If the obtrusive interruption and disturbance, 
on a recent occasion, of a public meeting of the friends of coloni- 
zation in the city of New York by colored persons, may be taken 
as any indication of the frame of mind which the publications in 
question have produced among them, and if the honorable and hon- 
est men, of whom there are so many, among the friends of the Anti- 
Slavery Society, do not set their faces against all future attempts 
to enkindle a contention of caste in the free States, — the conse- 
quences cannot fail to be altogether deplorable. 

The Colonization Society utterly disavows any sentiment or 
desio'n of ill-will towards the colored citizens of the United States. 
Our purposes, in respect of them, are dictated by benevolent con- 
sideration for their welftire. We may, it is true, be mistaken in 
the means we adopt for their intended good ; all men are liable 
to err ; but if we err in this matter, it is an error of the head, not 
of the heart. And for myself, I profess that the emigration from 
among us of all the colored inhabitants of the country would, in 



21 

my opinion, occasion achasm in various walks of industry, which 
I am at a loss to see how we should supply ;— and therefore I am 
not prepared to admit that their removal would be for our interest. 
At the same time I cannot sympathize in any partial scheme of 
alleged philanthropy, which, out of anxiety for the welfare of the 
blacks, would totally disregard that of the whites ; I cannot de- 
sire to see my country plunged into the horrors of a servile insur- 
rection or of civil war ; nor can I abstain from raising my voice 
against measures, which, in my apprehension, sap the very foun- 
dations of the Union. 

But enough, on these topics of disputation. Let me revert, in 
the conclusion of this discourse, to that, wherein all, it would seem, 
of a Christian land, must agree. Preeminent, assiu-edly, in the 
catalogue of the great blessings that we enjoy,— and a blessing as 
yet unknown to, or repudiated by, so many millions of mankind, 

is the fact that we are a Christian people. If I were asked to 

designate the primary cause of the extraordinary advancement of 
our age in all the arts of life and the principles of civil polity, I 
should unhesitatingly declare that it was the influence of the ten- 
ets, spirit, and religious teachings of Christianity. I speak not of 
this now as a matter of faith simply ; but in reference, also, to 
worldly considerations. 

Cast your eyes upon the favored climes of central and further 
Asia, the cradle of the human family, where thousands of years 
ago the lights of learning first beamed out upon man, and the 
charms of civilization gladdened his sight, to be gradually commu- 
nicated from thence to the younger races of Europe. Wherefore 
is it that the onward steps of their intellectual improvement were 
prematurely arrested in the march, and the vital principles of re- 
finement abruptly extinguished among them, — like the animated 
beings of mythology changed by supernatural power into stone, or 
the living body congealed in the instant by the rigors of an arctic 
sky ? Wherefore is it that the refluent tide of civilization, origin- 
ally poured f om the East upon the West, is now flowing back 
again with its accumulated volume of science and truth upon the 
primeval tutors of the world's unlettered infancy ? Wherefore, but 
because a dark and fearful superstition has woven the adamantine 



22 

chains of spintual lliraldom around the soul of the miserable Par- 
see or Hindoo, while the heaven-iaught faith of the Christian has im- 
parted new wings to the intellect of its proselyte, and enabled him 
to soar upward, in the confidence of his enlightened knowledge of 
truth, into the highest regions of divine philosophy? 

Looking thus to the effect of Christianity upon the human in- 
tellect and the social condition of man, I see that through this the 
social principle acquired that elasticity of spring, which pushes 
along the perpetual movement of melioration in everytliing apper- 
taining to human affairs. By this it is that the blessings of civili- 
zation, like the gradually enlarging circles on the surface of smooth 
water struck by the fall of a projected body, are made to spread 
and spread from their European centre, until they approach the 
limits of the habitable globe, and proceed to embrace in their am- 
ple scope all the sundered famihes of man. For in respect of the 
political advantagesof Christianity, it is not the sincerity of convic- 
tion, whicli distinguishes it from the delusion of the Buddhist or 
the Brahmin ; since the pagan hugs his debasing superstitions to 
his bosom with all the eager fondness of a better faith. It is the 
capacity of Christianity to elevate and enlarge the soul, to extend 
the sphere of its charities, to exalt the condition and purify the 
character of the fen^ale sex, to disseminate the peaceful gifts of 
moral greatness from man to man, and from nation to nation, by a 
native dignity and energy of principle, — it is this which has con- 
tributed so wonderfully to the diffusion of modern civilization. 

The Mahometan has, it is true, in past times, advanced the 
standard of his faith from region to region, but it was only as the 
banner of conquest and the stimulus to victory, that it waved above 
his barbaric hosts ; and the lands where he made them to encamp, 
those gardens of the ancient world, Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, 
were changed by his whhering presence into the chosen abodes of 
ignorance, wretchedne-s, and barbarism. For the Irllliancy of the 
caliphs of Bagdad was but a transient gleam of sunshine : and it 
was only in contact and collision with European Christians, that the 
Arabs of Spain acquired a more durable fame. 

When has an Oriental sage appeared in modern Europe to in- 
struct her children or inform her philosophers ? When has an 



23 

Asiatic, deeply as he may suppose he feels the Importance of liis 
peculiar dogmas, travelled to the kingdoms of Christendom on a 
mission of religious persuasion, and sought to bring his faith in com- 
petition with ours, in order that the true one might prevail by the 
peaceful victories of reason ? When has a Brahmin established 
himself among us, in tlie land of strangers, with a train of learned 
associates and a printing press, — I do not say to communicate to us 
the knowledge of the worldly science, which he may pretend is 
concealed in their sacred volumes, but to translate literally 
his sacred books into our vernacular tongue, and then to say to us, — 
' Read, judge, be convinced, abandon the religion you profess, 
and embrace instead of it the better doctrine, whh which I would 
enlighten your darkened sense ? ' Never, — no, never. These are 
the distinguishing triumphs of Christianity, and these are the means 
by which the nations of Christendom have propagated from shore 
to shore, not only those religious tenets which are to secure eternal 
salvation, but those refined principles of social improvement, which, 
in the luminous track of the Cross, have passed on to America, 
to be returned back again to Asia and to Africa. 

If, then, Christianity be a reWgiou o^ propagandism, — and I dis- 
pute not that it is, nay I glory in this its noble quality, since it 
is the propagation of religion and of social refinement, hand in hand, 
which signalises its career, — if, I say, it be such, is not ours a 
plain and visible path of duty ? 

I thank God that he has made us a powerful and a prosperous 
people ; that he has given us extended territory, and extraordinary 
natural resources, and all the elements of lasting elevation ; that he 
has richly endowed us with industry, enterprise, education, religion ; 
that to all the means, physical and moral, of acquiring wealth and 
grandeur as a nation, he has added the disposition to minister to 
the wants of our fellow-men. And I thank God for all this, not in 
the spirh of boastful n ess or pride, but because, in so doing, he has 
chosen us to be the almoners of his bounty, that of our abundance 
we should dispense to the millions, who have not yet entertained 
his word, and who are still groaning in the bitterness of bondage 



24 

and ignorance, destitute of the blessings of civilization which we 
possess, waiting for the messenger of truth to descend and prepare 
the waters of life, that they also may approach, and enter, and be 
saved. Be it our glorious mission to carry the Cross from nation 
to nation, rallying their tribes, not to the flaming sign of war, but to 
the bright symbol of peace, — that as Christ, and the Apostles, and 
holy martyrs, bore it in the olden time from Judsea over the Greek 
and Roman world, and thus transmitted it through our fathers to 
us, so also we, emulous of the divine example set us, may take up 
the sacred emblem, and bear it into the yet benighted regions 
of Africa. 



THE COLONIZATIONIST 

AND 

JOURNAL OF FREEDOM, 

Will be devoted primarily to the exposition and support of the principles and plans of the 
American Colonization Society, as the former have heretofore bccnmainly declared 
in the authentic publications of that Society, and th-e latter developed in the course of its 
history, and the history of the Colony it has founded on the African Coast. Not that an ar- 
ticle, acceptable in other respects, will be of course excluded from the pages of this Maga- 
zine, because it may call in question the wisdom of some point in the management, or in the 
argument, of the Institution — and much less of its numerous private advocates and patrons 
of various classes, parties, and sections — for, on the contrary, the determination of the edi- 
tors is, to come up to the discussion of all the great topics readily suggested by a liberal 
view of the subject, with such a single eye to truth and justice, and to the welfare of all 
our fellow-citizens and fellow-men, that whatever services they may be able to render to 
those leading interests, shall, however humble in themselves, at least possess the merit of 
being as conscientious as they will be cordial. 

Among these topics will be, not merely the Colonization scheme, strictly so called, but 
the constitution, capacity, condition, and history of the African race, of all classes and all 
climes — the civilization of the African Continent — the African slave trade — the system of 
personal servitude in this country and elsewhere — together with all the consequences, of 
every description, which have arisen or may arise from the extension of the colonial system 
on the AVestern African Coast. As to slavery in the United States, (to which all New- 
England, and a large part of the population of the slave-holding States themselves, are 
equally opposed in principle and in feeling,) the Magazine will pursue that course which 
the editors deem to b^ at once compatible with the harmony of the Union, and the dignity 
of free men — a policy of fearless but catholic frankness, blended with the regard due from 
all citizens and all christians to the existence of circumstances, and especially to the Consti- 
tution and laws of the country — a policy believed to be not only free from any just charge 
of fanaticism, but to be the only effectual mode by which any good may be accomplished 
in reference to that portion of our population now held in bondage. . 

The Magazine will comprise also brief JVotices of all important new works, relating to 
the subjects in its scope — Intelligence, carefully collected from every quarter of the globe 
— and a Correspondence, vigorously sustained, expressly for the Magazine, with Liberia 
direct, and with every section of our own country. 

The work will be issued in monthly numbers of thirty-two pages each, printed on fine 
paper, at the price of two dollars per annum. Persons becoming responsible for five copies, 
will be entitled to a sixth gratis. 

GEO, W. LIGHT & Co., 3 Cornhill. 






sPvs 



M^i^^ 






o?-^ V-J^*^^ %''f.^i^.o^^ V*!^%^^ ^ 










*^„^%* .♦ 










3^ o«-*-.V 







v^' 










777* A 







"bV 















% 







"^-i.^^^ 




• "A A* > 






* p 



"*<>. ••;» 



-^..♦^ 















V <^m^^\ '^'^^s •v'^^^icv- «>t.i.^^ -^£Sim>^. ^^^r^ 










^<>.<^\/ ^o^-^-*/ ^<>.*^^\/ % 



'^^n <^'^" 
"^^4" 






/% 





•o< 





^^^ ^^ • • • * .V 
















!|!|ii|!;t|il|;||:i||||i| 



